If You’re Not Smart, at Least You Can Look Smart!

My father used to tell anyone who would listen that it only took his son (yours truly) three terms to graduate from college – Nixon’s, Ford’s and Carter’s.

But he also dispensed this bit of sage advice, “if you look like a player you just might fool someone.”

That reference was to my accomplishments in organized athletics, an annual exercise in futility that often prompted my coaches to inquire if I was born with six ankles.

But thankfully those days are firmly pressed into a glad-to-be-forgotten scrapbook. Now at my advanced age, I found that you can gain respectability in the corporate world – if not the athletic fields - even if you have the workplace skills and knowledge of the pointy-haired boss from “Dilbert.”

I’ve often told you of my disdain for meetings, but that’s one venue where you can gain a favorable impression with both colleagues and the C-suite armed with some simple techniques.

To wit:

If there’s a slide presentation, ask the organizer to “back up one slide.” That will ensure to everyone that at least someone’s paying attention or ask the organizer to repeat what he/she just said only “very slowly” for emphasis.

If there are no slides, raise your hand in the middle of the presentation and simply ask, “That’s impressive, but can you explain how will this scale?” You will be amazed at how many eyebrows that question will raise and everyone will think you actually understand what they were attempting to show.

And another one of my favorites is pretending to take notes, but nodding slowly as you do it. It’s critical you never, ever forget to nod.

If someone says that nearly 70 percent of our clients (or whatever the subject) skew this or that way, immediately jump in with “so roughly 2/3 of them if I’m hearing correctly.” You will suddenly appear to be imbued with Stephen Hawking- like math skills.

Now comes the next critical stage - the email follow up.

First, send one out ASAP after the meeting and reply all. Go over the key points and always end with a question such as “does anyone have any thoughts on …..?

Then, send another one out at an ungodly hour like 3 a.m. with some of your own bullet points (no one has to know you wrote them hours before and set it on auto-delivery).

When you get that raise and promotion, I hope you’ll remember to thank me.